Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen

My first impulse was to call this post something relating to "Lösung der Judenfrage" as a tribute to my house god Theodor Herzl, but in the end I fell for a different title. But it's still in an evil language :-)

The title translated into English says: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

My point being: To the degree that we cannot speak intelligently about the Jewish question (der Judenfrage as Herzl would have said in his evil language), we had better leave it aside.

During recent eruptions over at Gates of Vienna I stated "The Jewish question is a dead end". Rebellious Vanilla protested against this in an email, so I'll need to explain. I'm not at all saying that it's not an interesting topic, highly pertinent to explore and with many important insights with regards to what makes the West fall apart. I'm simply saying that people are evidently unable to discuss it. (And if they can't, they had better not.)

I'm trying to find a proper analogy. It's like saying that we should have lessons in school with everyone being naked. In theory that should work fine (at least in the Germanic north). But in practice everyone will be so distracted by the nakedness, that they cannot really focus on the teaching. Some students will be so obsessed about it that they will promptly act in a way making no teaching possible at all. And quite as with the JQ there will be two opposite kinds of obsessions: i) the ones whose sex drive reach an uncontrollable peak and go crazy for that, and ii) the ones who disintegrates into moral fits over the indiscretion of the first group (or anyone they choose to see as belonging to it).

It's our eternal soap opera of The Nazis and The Jews continuing untiring, with the same old dramaturgy. People of today have an insatiable craving for the simplistic and superficial patterns of this drama. It is the most defining mythological narrative for Westerners of today -- the mythological narrative which leaves the deepest imprint in their minds and soul -- no matter what positions they take in the drama (and there is a strong gravity towards extremes here).

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My position has always been that it's pointless to take positions in this drama, since the drama is phony; that this whole soap opera and its excesses should just be thrown away. That we instead should focus on real issues, instead of having our minds getting lost in this mythological maze, fed into our minds through the shadow theater in the Platonic cave.

This mythological drama controls the minds of modern Westerners, by invoking the most primitive emotions: fear and hate -- it plays their emotions like a violin. And where the reptile brain turns on -- coupled with religious style zeal -- sound reason is all gone. And this is equally true regardless of which side of the drama that people identify with. I.e. it's equally true for both Abe Foxman and David Duke. And for virtually everyone in-between. Because the gravity of the two extreme points is so strong that virtually no one is able to resist it. It's like a dual system of two black holes where eventually people will be sucked into any of them, and everything becomes darkness.

I've seen such a long line of people in the blogosphere (both blog owners and commenters) who imagine themselves -- and create the expectation among others (who are after all heavily worn out by this frantic drama, and would like to find a way out of it) -- as dealing with the "issue" reasonably, detached and evenhandedly. But sooner or later the mask falls off, and their gravity towards one of the black holes become obvious.

Victimization-mythology about the Jews and fixation about Jews as "the cause of all our problems" are, after all, just two sides of the very same coin. And the coin could be named "obsession about Jews", a fixation about the soap opera of "The Nazis and The Jews".

The solution is not to choose a side of the coin, the solution is to throw the coin away. I have always suggested to move away orthogonally from the issue. Philosemitism and antisemitism are just two sides of the very same coin, and closely related; quite as love and hate are. Philosemitism will easily flip into antisemitism. Making 180 degree turns just makes you go back and forth along the same line, in the same vicinity and according to the same narrative. "The opposite" is too similar to what you are trying to oppose. Move away from it orthogonally (I assume the readers know basic geometry), scrap the narrative and the mythology that drives it (Christianity is a main factor in driving both antisemitism and philosemitism). Get over it and make the Jews irrelevant -- that's the most merciful solution both for us and them.

Fjordman wrote a great article, published at Gates of Vienna, discussing how the Proposition Nation might be our most fundamental enemy. Someone brought up the Joooos immediately and the whole thread turned into a mixed sauna of presumptive rapist and priestly moralists wreaking havoc. The content of the article was never properly discussed. The JQ and intelligent discussion are like oil and water. And the JQ enters discussions where it is not the topic, thanks to certain fanatics who are unable to discuss anything else but the JQ, and will make it the topic whatever else was argued. And once that point is reached it's like if a dog had come into the living room shitting on the carpet. The stench will dominate the existence of the whole room and the discourse for clear thinking and reasoned arguments will be all gone.

This has to be stopped. Incurable sex addicts need to be restrained. Same thing here. In civilized societies we keep our clothes on. Whenever a naked man with a hard-on runs into the room, throw him out. Not because we are ashamed of what is under our clothes. But because his behaviour shows that he's unable to control himself.

Anyway, back to Wittgenstein and the title of my post. Why am I talking about something that I suggest we should be silent about? "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen". Well, Wittgenstein wrote a whole book about it to come to this conclusion. And this is what he wrote in his penultimate paragraph:

"My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly."

What I write here is of the same kind. However, I have no intention of throwing away the ladder for quite some time. Instead I will make this into a series of posts. (Yes, I'm back blogging. At least for a while.)

Finally, my moderation policy will be as follows: your comment will be deleted! If it hasn't been, consider it as providence. (NB: This is entirely consistent with the ideas I express in this post.)